Dr. Chris Impey will be presenting a free lecture on the compelling topic Is There Life Beyond Earth? Tuesday, April 2 at 7:30 p.m.

Photo: Contributed - arizona.edu

Dr. Chris Impey.

Impey is the Deputy Head of the Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona with more than 160 research papers to his name. He has had 14 projects approved for observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, and his work has been supported by $18-million in grants from both NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Impey is also the author of the book The Living Cosmos, which shed light on the growing field of astrobiology back in 2007, and How it Began: A Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Universe published in 2010.

Impey’s talk will summarize ideas on the definition and nature of life, the search for habitable worlds, and the ways science might detect biology in those worlds.

“The search for life in the universe addresses one of the most profound issues in science – the status of biology on Earth in a cosmos that is likely to contain many habitable planets with all the ingredients needed for biology,” said Impey.